Small World 2, the digital version of the epic fantasy board game, earned lots of kudos from reviewers, and even more love from hundreds of thousands of fans of the game. Feedback from these players on what else they wanted to see in Small World has inspired our development team to take things to an even higher level.

Introducing Small World 2.5 - featuring an even more refined online game system that delivers the best of both asynchronous and competitive online play.

Small World 2.5 now gives you:

A full-featured Lobby with real-time chat, list of connected players, game creation and list of open games to join. Within this Online Arena you'll find a thriving community of avid Small World players ready to play 24/7.

New Single-Session Online games - real-time gaming with bots taking over when someone quits. Even better, all games now run with a Speed Chess-like competitive Player clock that controls how much time each player has left to play.

Multi-Session Online games - the asynchronous gaming already in Small World 2, but with even more options to control who gets invited, how long your game will last, and a myriad of other options regarding ranked games, karma filtering, starting player selection, and more.

We've also implemented more of everything: More ranking, persistent in-game chat, chat in the final score screen, and a super detailed statistics screen at the end of each game to analyze how each player performed with various race/power combinations.

Best of all, this Brave New Small World 2.5 is a free upgrade for all existing players; if you haven't yet ventured into this Brave New Small World, now is the perfect time. It's available for iPad, compatible Android devices, and Steam for PC, Mac and Linux!

Go to the Small World Digital web page to learn more, or visit the App Store, Google Play store or Steam and get Small World 2.5 today!

I recently purchased Small World version 2 for my kindle, this cost approx £6. I made this purchase because I enjoyed the board game so much and wanted to play on my Kindle with friends. There were so many issues with the Kindle app for example; being kicked out of games, having to watch play back and re signing in. Despite these issues I still use to use the app to play on-line, until today. To my great annoyance I have been informed that I must upgrade my small world app to version 2.5 and am unable to play at all on the old version. One having just paid for the fist app a few days ago I don't wish to pay out even more and Two this 2.5 addition is not even available at the amazon kindle store! I am very unhappy with your service thus far and feel very disappoint.

I recently purchased Small World version 2 for my kindle, this cost approx £6. I made this purchase because I enjoyed the board game so much and wanted to play on my Kindle with friends. There were so many issues with the Kindle app for example; being kicked out of games, having to watch play back and re signing in. Despite these issues I still use to use the app to play on-line, until today. To my great annoyance I have been informed that I must upgrade my small world app to version 2.5 and am unable to play at all on the old version. One having just paid for the fist app a few days ago I don't wish to pay out even more and Two this 2.5 addition is not even available at the amazon kindle store! I am very unhappy with your service thus far and feel very disappoint.

Kind Regards

Sarah Slade

We are sorry about your troubles: we contacted Amazon two hours ago and it appeared that the app had not been pushed to production at the time it was scheduled, for some reason. They assured us that the matter had been corrected, and that the update should become available "within a few hours" (it takes time to propagate through all their servers). This 2.5 upgrade is free, of course.

Regarding the other problems you describe, you will find that version 2.5 addresses them in several ways. The connecting part works much better, with Bots taking over when the other players quits, the new Online Arena will allow you to create or join online games much easier, etc.

So just a few more hours, and you will be able to discover all this. Hopefully this will make you feel better with the game and with all the hard work that we have put it in for the past 2 years.

Good news, the new 2.5 version is now available on the Kindle. If it did not update automatically, you can un-install and re-install it. When you start it, you will see in the upper left corner of the screen the version number. It should start by "2.5.0-1248".

We hope you will enjoy this new upgrade, and once again, we thank you for your patience.

Good news, the new 2.5 version is now available on the Kindle. If it did not update automatically, you can un-install and re-install it. When you start it, you will see in the upper left corner of the screen the version number. It should start by "2.5.0-1248".

We hope you will enjoy this new upgrade, and once again, we thank you for your patience.

Yann

Thanks Yann. It got updated automatically in my Kindle Fire.

By the way, the digital version led me to grab the tabletop edition to play with my friends! Outstanding implementation.

The "Invite Buddies" asynchronous play in SW 2.5 doesn't function anything like it used to.

It is now "unplayable" with my friends' and my schedule.

I really liked the older method, where I could invite my friends, then immediately play my turn. They then had plenty of time to take their turns. I would check the next day to play my next turn.

Sure, it took us a week (or more) to play a game, but that worked just fine for us.

Some of my friends live in a different part of the country and are not able to be online at the same time to start (let alone play) a game with such stringent time limits.

Please add a "Casual Play" option or something similar to allow those of us that want to play the old way!

Although the new asynchronous system looks different, it actually plays very, very similarly to the old system. Here are the differences:

1) Now you invite your opponents and the game waits until everyone joins the game before starting. This prevents people from inviting others, checking to see what powers they get, and then canceling the invitation. People could do this over and over until they got a favorable starting position...

2) Another new feature is the time limit system. If you set it for 15 days, you will have plenty of time to finish your games. It give EACH players 15 days to complete all of their turns. Even a busy schedule won't prevent you from taking your turns before the time runs out.

3) Once my turn is over, my player clock starts and the next clock begins. So it doesn't matter if you're online at the same time. The goal is that people can play from anywhere in the world!

Maybe there's a different issue going on for you, but based on what you said I don't see how this new system could be a problem.

Well, I used to start a game first thing in the morning, then my friends had all day to join.

As I stressed, my friends and I are going to have extreme difficulty just to initiate a game.

Did they change the individual turn duration to 15 days? That's nice (it didn't look like it, but I've not been able to successfully start a game to find out).

All you have to do is select 15 days for the time limit. Then your friends can take up to 15 days to join...and once they all join the game will start. The first player takes their turn, and then each person has time to take their turn after that.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't have been able to successfully start a game to see how it works! Do you know what has been preventing it up to this point?

There is a special Advanced Settings button in the Invite Buddies section. You can adjust the time limit, you can choose the turn order or set it to random, you can enable or disable automatic redeployment and you can choose to make the game ranked or unranked.

The new system of inviting buddies provides more freedom, than the previous one. 15 days to accept the invitation - just think of it! The game itself (I mean taking all the turns) requires not more than 20 minutes per player. And now we can have 15 days! One can accept the invitation, take his first turn and then go for a safari for 5 days, then come back and still feel comfortable to finish the game!

I am sure there is no situation when the new system can be uncomfortable, one just has to understand how it works:)

Everytime I close the game from the task switcher and then later open it again, it tells me that the app was closed unexpectedly and asks me whether I want to send a report or not.

I know that message comes from the crash reporting framework they used in the app but that message should only appear if the app had crashed the last time I opened it. It only crashed once, but it keeps asking this everytime I open it again and this might lead to hundreds of misleading crash reports to the devs if people choose to send everytime.

Cihant, you are using an iPad, correct? Which version of iOS?
Could you describe a details step-by-step procedure?

Thanks in advance,

Yann @ DOW

Yes, I'm using an iPad 4 running iOS 7.1.1.

The steps to reproduce are simple:
1- Launch the app
2- Do a 4 finger swipe gesture to open up the app switcher, and then close the app from there.
3- Launch the app again and you'll see that after the splash screen, "Small World 2 Unexpectedly Quit" message comes up.

As an important note, I've just tried it on a fresh install. So it does this even if the app hadn't crashed in the past.

Cihant, you are using an iPad, correct? Which version of iOS?
Could you describe a details step-by-step procedure?

Thanks in advance,

Yann @ DOW

Yes, I'm using an iPad 4 running iOS 7.1.1.

The steps to reproduce are simple:
1- Launch the app
2- Do a 4 finger swipe gesture to open up the app switcher, and then close the app from there.
3- Launch the app again and you'll see that after the splash screen, "Small World 2 Unexpectedly Quit" message comes up.

As an important note, I've just tried it on a fresh install. So it does this even if the app hadn't crashed in the past.
[Updated on: Fri, 13 June 2014 14:21]

My iPad 2 is also running iOS 7.1.1. and I can confirm that this happens every time, not that it bothers me much, but it is definitely not the way it should work.

Yann, you wrote in Design Notes that the chat between players would be persistent even in asynchronous games.http://www.daysofwonder.com/en/msg/?th=28965&start=0
But is it really persistent now? I entered an asynchronous game game, left a message to check it, then re entered, opened the chat bubble and saw nothing.
EDIT: Got it now! One has to tap the pointing down arrow to see the chat, great feature!